


Collateral Damage

by chiiyo86



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s02e14 Born Under a Bad Sign, Flashbacks, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Season/Series 02, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2, Post "Born Under a Bad Sign." After Sam's forced exorcism, Sam and Dean are holed up in a motel room in Iowa when they receive an unexpected visit: Jo Harvelle, coming to them with a shoebox her mother gave her. The box is full of memories of John Winchester, which sheds light on John's bittersweet relationship with the Harvelles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

_Iowa, February 2007_

“I’m going to the grocery store. Need anything?” Sam asked, slipping his jacket on.

His brother was lying down on his rumpled motel bed, legs crossed at the ankles, staring at the small TV crowning the old-fashioned dresser. He was flipping the channels too fast to be genuinely watching, but he didn’t react to Sam’s words; either deep in thoughts or ignoring him.

“Dean? Hey, you listening?”

“Mmh?” Dean lazily turned his head and cocked an expectant eyebrow at Sam. “Sorry, you were saying?”

It was a testament to how messed up they were that Sam couldn’t tell whether Dean had really not heard him or was giving him the cold shoulder. Cold shoulder, ha. When Dean started to half sit up, propping himself on an elbow on his uninjured side, Sam caught a sliver of bandage and his guts twisted with something cold.

“I said I was going out,” he said, trying hard to sound casual. “Do you want something?”

“Going out?” Dean finished pushing himself up, sitting straight and throwing his legs off the bed. “I’m coming with.”

Frustration hit Sam with a nauseous wave, but he firmly pushed it down. “No, Dean. You rest up. I’ll be gone fifteen minutes—twenty minutes tops if there’s a line at the store.”

Dean was already putting on his boots. “That’s what you said last time. Besides, I don’t need rest.”

_Of course you don’t. Got shot by your own brother, almost drowned, got in a fight with a demon. Does wonders for your health, I’m sure._

The words bubbled up Sam’s throat, striving to get out. But he recognized the kind of mood his brother was in; the stubborn, full-on-blinders kind. He was too tired to fight despite the twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep he’d had.

“Suit yourself,” he mumbled, even though part of the aim for his little outing had been to have some time to himself, away from the stifling silence lingering around their motel room.

The walk to the store was only a five-minute one, but the cold had had the time to fully seize Sam, who shivered and zipped his jacket up to his chin. Dean, for his part, didn’t look too bothered by it. It was early enough on Sunday morning that it was quiet out there, with hardly any cars rolling down the streets. They’d left Bobby’s and hurried out of South Dakota, driving deep into the rolling hills of Iowa, stopping a couple hundred miles away from Des Moines in a small town whose name Sam couldn’t summon up right now. It was quite pretty with its blue lamp-posts curving down like bell-shaped flowers, its brick-red, white and grey facades and its clean sidewalks.

“Did you hear from Jo?” Sam asked. 

He’d wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but now that Dean was here he felt an obscure need to spark a conversation, preferably something his brother didn’t want to talk about so that they didn’t have to broach the subjects _Sam_ wanted to ignore. Dean non-answered with a grunt. 

“You should giver her a call,” Sam insisted, earning himself a withering glance from his brother.

“What’s with the sudden obsession with Jo?” Dean snapped, his voice mean. He sighed then, pulled a hand from where it was buried deep into his pocket to rub his face, and said, “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Sam would have replied, but they’d reached their destination and it was easier to just let it go. He pushed the door of the grocery store open, little bell jingling at their entrance, and for a moment Sam had a flash of the convenience store where Meg-as-him had stolen liquor—the young clerk with the shaggy brown hair and the tentative goatee, horror and outrage on his face. _Hey, are you gonna pay for this? What the hell is wrong with you?_ Sam froze, but it was gone as fast as it’d come, and he could see that the clerk here was an older woman with a tired face, her skin thin and wrinkled like tissue paper.

“Sammy?” 

“Huh?” Sam startled at his brother’s voice. “What?”

Dean wriggled his fingers in front of his face, and Sam swatted at his hand. “You kinda zoned out on me, dude.”

“No, no, it’s—”

“Uh, yes you did.”

“No, I mean—” Sam pushed past his brother to enter the store, and to not have to look at him. “I mean I’m _fine_.”

“Right. You’re _fine_ ,” Dean parroted, pitching his voice higher in what was probably supposed to be his Sam’s impersonation. 

Thankfully they didn’t have to talk to each other as they separately wandered around the aisles, meeting again at checkout. Sam bought toothpaste and razor blades; Dean bought beer.

“You’re still on painkillers,” Sam pointed out.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Sam, it’s _beer_. I’d get higher with a stick of glue.” 

The tone left no room for argument, so Sam didn’t bother with a reply. Arguing wouldn’t bring him any relief. Outside it had started drizzling, and the rain felt like walking through icy mist. The low, heavy gray clouds sucking in all light in the sky seemed like a perfect reflection for Sam’s mood: hopeless about ever seeing another sunray again. By his side Dean was silent, walking with his eyes down, his mouth pinched in a way that suggested that he was in pain again. They were getting close to the motel when he stopped suddenly, forcing Sam to run into his back.

“Shit. What’s she doing here?”

Sam moved around his brother to get a better view of the figure standing in the distance.

“Well,” he said once he could see who was waiting in front of the door to their motel room. “Speaking of the devil.”

He gave a little wave at Jo when he saw her turn her head towards them, having caught on to their approach. The fine rain made her hair sparkle with a thousand of tiny shiny pearls, and she was shivering in the cold, her beige biker jacket opened at the front. She was carrying a box under her arm, right hip sticking out to keep it safely propped.

“Hi, guys,” she said once Sam and Dean were within speaking distance. “Still waiting for that call,” she said to Dean, who babbled, “Ah, uh, yeah. Sorry. I was just about to do it, you know, I swear—ask Sammy.”

“Uh huh,” said Jo, angling a skeptical eyebrow. “Looks like you found your brother, at least.”

She turned to Sam, and Sam had to force himself to meet her eyes. She looked at him with an expression that was considering and not hostile, which made Sam hopeful that this was not going to be as awkward as he feared.

“Are you boys gonna let me in or what?” she finally said, and Sam hurriedly got his key out of his pocket to unlock the motel room door. 

They all rushed in as soon as the door was open, eager to get out of the wet and cold. Jo went straight to one of the beds—Dean’s unmade one, Sam noted, trying not to read too much into it—and dropped down on it, putting the box on her lap with her hands resting on the top. It was a cardboard shoebox, old enough that the corners were worn white.

“What’s this?” Dean asked as he freed one of the beers he’d just bought from its package. “Want one?”

Jo nodded her agreement, and Dean handed her an uncapped beer, and another one for Sam. Sam didn’t particularly want to drink beer right now, but he accepted the cool bottle anyway. It was just one of those things they did.

“This,” Jo said after she’d had a gulp of her beer, “is something that might interest you. Mom gave it to me. I went to see her, after…” She shrugged and had another swallow. “You know.” She looked at Sam.

“Yeah,” he said. He did know; he couldn’t make himself unknow, was the problem.

“Do you remember anything from what happened?” she asked him, her head tilted to the side as she examined him.

Dean had shrugged off his jacket and straddled one of the chairs that went with the table stuck in a corner of the room. He was frowning at the exchange. Sam was still standing close to the door, awkwardly holding his untouched beer in his hands, feeling like he might need the easy exit to bolt out at any moment.

_My daddy shot your daddy in the head._

“Some of it,” he said, the words barely passing the tightness in his throat.

“Okay,” Dean said, “I’m sure it would be fun and all, but do we really need to have this conversation? This wasn’t _Sam_ , alright, this was—”

“I know,” Jo cut him in. “I’m not trying to make Sam feel bad here, so you can retract your claws, big brother. It’s just, some of what the demon said, about my dad and yours…” She saw the clueless look on Dean’s face. “Oh, you don’t know. Wel—the demon alluded to my dad’s death, saying that my dad got hurt real bad and your dad…”

“Put him down like a sick dog,” Sam finished for her.

She shot him a look, but didn’t try to put a more positive spin on it. “Anyways,” she continued, “I went to my mom and asked her to tell me more about what happened. And about your dad, and about… everything. She didn’t want to talk, but she gave me that box.” She rattled her fingers against the box on her lap. “Said her keepsakes of John were all in here. I figured… that you guys might want to have a look at it too.”

Sam dared send a sidelong glance his brother’s way. Dean’s face was shut as tight as a bank vault.

“What’s inside?” Sam asked.

Jo shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

They shared a threeway long look, ominous silence settling in between them.

“Fine,” Dean said after a moment, putting his beer down on the table with a resounding thump. “Let’s have a look inside.”

Sam and Dean crowded around Jo to have a good angle when she opened the box. She looked up at them, her eyes lingering for a moment on each of them, and then pulled the lid off. Inside were documents of all sorts—letters, pictures, yellowed newspaper clips. Jo shuffled them with her fingers, and pulled one picture out. It was a faded photograph of a younger John, posing with a younger Ellen, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face bright and fresh, and a man that had to be Bill Harvelle. The man’s arm was wrapped around Ellen’s shoulders, and he had a handsome face and an easy smile. On Ellen’s left, John was standing ambiguously close to her, so that it was hard to say whether he had a hand to the small of her back. It brought back to the forefront of Sam’s mind that thought he’d had when they first met Ellen, that maybe John and her had been lovers. Maybe even when Bill was still alive. He knew better than to voice that to Dean and Jo.

“They look cozy,” Dean said, dismissive, before grabbing another picture.

This photograph, in sepia tones, was too old to be one of any of their parents. It pictured a little girl in a white dress, white ribbon in her pale hair, standing alone on the edge of a pool, a gravestone in the background. Her reflection in the still water showed _two_ little girls in white dresses.

“That’s… unsettling, I guess,” Jo said. “Think it’s from a hunt they did together?” She turned the photo to look at the back. It was written, _July 26, 1985._

“This can’t be the day the picture was taken,” Sam said. “Wait a sec. I think maybe…”

He went to his duffle bag to dig up his dad’s journal, and leafed rapidly through it until he found what he wanted. “Look,” he said to Dean and Jo, who were watching him with rapt attention. “There’s an entrance for this very date. ‘July 26 1985, Montana,’” he read aloud, “Bannack, Montana. Ghost town in the middle of Bannack State Park…”

\---

_Montana, July 1985_

“When was it taken?” John asked, turning the picture to see if anything was written on the back. There was no date, no name.

“Early 20s’, that’s my guess,” said Mrs. Barringer, a stocky fifty-something woman sensibly dressed in slacks and turtleneck sweater. Her callous fingers and short, scraped fingernails betrayed her as someone who worked a lot with her hands. “My mother must have been about ten when it was taken,” she added, pointing at the little girl standing on her own by the water.

“Who took it?”

“I don’t know. Everyone was pretty freaked out by the way that picture came out, and my grandparents didn’t like to talk about it. They moved out of Bannack pretty soon after.”

“And this is the same pond Emily Fergus drowned in?”

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Barringer said impatiently. “The dredge pond along Grasshopper creek. Why do you think I’m showing this to you?” She leaned forward, her voice dropping like she was afraid to be overheard, even though, as far as John knew, they were alone in the house. “I know what’s going on.”

“Do you now?” John said carefully. All the people he’d ever interviewed for a hunt had been unaware of his real intentions. He wasn’t really sure what to do with the woman’s knowing look.

“This is what you do, isn’t it. _Ghost hunting_ ,” she stage-whispered. 

“You think a ghost killed that young woman?”

“Bannack is a ghost town! Of course a ghost killed that poor girl. Ghost sighting is a thing in this town, especially at the hotel. I think the ghost in that picture is Dorothy Dunn—she was a teenager who drowned in that pond in August 4, 1916. Her mother worked in the hotel.”

John knew all this; he’d done his homework. But ghost sightings were one thing—they were harmless. Emily Fergus’ death was a whole other ballgame. “But has this ghost ever killed anyone?”

Mrs. Barringer’s mouth twisted in annoyance, and she leaned back against the back of her leather armchair, crossing her arms over her chest and looking contemptuously at John through half-lidded eyes. 

“Do you take me for an old fool, young man?” 

“I wouldn’t, ma’am,” John said with as much grace as he could muster. “But if you called me for my… _expertise,_ trust me when I say this: ghosts don’t start killing unless something changed. So Emily died during a historical reconstitution, right—the “Bannack Days.”” Mrs. Barringer nodded once and John went on, “This takes place every year so this can’t be what upset the ghost. Was there anything different this year?”

“Well, there was the usual breakfast served in the old Meade hotel, but… Oh!” Mrs. Barringer jumped on her seat like she was sitting on hot coals. “The pond! They filled the pond this year—where Dorothy died. Could that be it?”

John made himself look thoughtful and nodded, although in truth he had no real idea of what could make a ghost tick. He only had a few salt-and-burns under his belt. But it seemed like a safe bet to assume that disturbing the place of its death was a likely ghost trigger, so it wasn’t even a white lie.

“Probably. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Barringer. I’ll take care of the matter.”

They shook hands, Mrs. Barringer almost crushing John’s fingers into her enthusiastic grip. John went back to his motel room in Dillon and got ready for his expedition to Bannack the next day. Dorothy Dunn had been buried next to the pond she had drowned in. Grave digging was usually more of a nighttime activity, but John figured that since Bannack was a ghost town in the middle of a State Park, he could afford to move it to broad daylight.

Bannack, nestled between hills, was no more than a handful of buildings gathered around a main street, most of them wooden, a lot false-fronted. It was like stepping right into a western. The sun was high in the sky when John found Dorothy Dunn’s grave—a simple stone with her name and the sobering inscription “Drowned, March 1916”—and after about half-an-hour of digging he had to lose the jacket and pull up his shirtsleeves.

The salt and burn was a quick business and when he was done, John decided to take a look around. His feet led him to the Meade Hotel, where most of Dorothy’s sightings had been reported. It was a redbrick, two-story building with a wooden porch and balcony on the front. “HOTEL MEADE” was written above a series of three windows opening on the balcony. Age had greyed the wood but the building looked otherwise sound, and John didn’t hesitate to go up the porch stairs and push the right panel of the entrance door. 

He took a step inside. It smelled old and musty, and the sun filtered in in dusty beams. On his right a staircase climbed up in a gentle curve, while on his left the hallway opened on what probably used to be a dining room but was now empty. There were a couple of doors in front of him. The doorframes were painted a dark blue paint that was now flaking and the walls with a yellow that had faded with time. It was hot inside the hotel, stuffy even with the sun pounding against the windowpanes. The only sound to be heard was John’s own breathing.

Was this place still haunted? John had heard that reading the level of EMF could be an indication of a ghost’s presence, but until he invested in an EMF reader all he had to go with was his gut instinct. Slowly, wooden stairs creaking under his weight, John made his way up the stairs to the second floor.

A startling drift of cold air was his only warning before he saw her, waiting for him—or so it seemed—at the top of the stairs. Halfway through her teens, blond hair pulled up with a ribbon and a blue dress that brought out her eyes—John recognized her immediately from the accounts he’d read before coming to Montana. Dorothy Dunn, still dead and kicking. She didn’t look at all like a drowned victim, but more like what she’d been when she used to play in the hotel’s hallways.

For an instant, John almost believed she was harmless. “Hey,” he said stupidly, before she waved her hand and threw him down the stairs. 

Almost two years of hunting had taught him well: he rolled down curled in on a ball, and when he reached first floor he was dizzy and sore but none worse for the wear. He scrambled up to his feet, but not quickly enough to match a ghost. Dorothy flickered from the top to the bottom in a split second, and when John straightened up he found himself face-to-face with her. She looked at him with pouty annoyance, a little girl bothered in the middle of her favorite game. John slid a hand in his backpack for the can of salt he’d used on her remains but abruptly she snarled, the savage expression out of place on her young face, and John flew against a wall and was pinned there by unnatural pressure a few inches off the floor. The pressure got intense, constricting his ribcage in a vice and cutting his breathing, and black spots were starting to dance before John’s eyes when something slashed through Dorothy and she dissolved with a surprised shriek. John slid down and his knees buckled, sending him toppling forward.

“Hey, you okay?” asked a male voice.

“Yeah,” John said, talking to his knees, but before he could ask _who the hell are you_ , the man who had talked hauled him up by the arm.

“We need to get outta here and fast,” the man said, pushing John toward the half-open entrance door. The house started shaking and John quickened his pace, bolted outside and jumped down the porch stairs to gain time. The door slammed shut behind him but when John whirled around, his salt can in hand, he saw that the ghost hadn’t followed them outside.

“Must be bound to the house,” his savior said, and John finally took the time to give him a look over.

The man was about as tall as he was, a wave of brown hair, laughing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was holding a poker in his hands; probably what he’d slashed the ghost with.

“Who are you?” John said roughly, then realized how rude he’d been with a man who had just saved his life. “Thanks for the hand in here,” he added.

The man waved like it was nothing. “Name’s Bill,” he said, holding out a hand for John to shake. “Bill Harvelle.” 

“John Winchester.”

Bill Harvelle’s eyes drifted back to the house, looking it over with a little twist of the mouth. “Historical landmark. It’s a shame.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” and Harvelle’s smile turned mischievous. “Now we’re gonna need to burn that building down, aren’t we?”

\---

_Iowa, Ferbruary 2007_

“’Help from BH, a hunter from Nebraska’,” Sam read. “I’m guessing this stands for ‘Bill Harvelle.’ This must be the first time they met.”

“1985,” Jo said pensively. “I’d just been born. So by the time my dad died in ’88 they’d known each other for a few years.”

“They were probably friends,” Sam said. “Dad…” He flickered a look in his brother’s direction; sitting by Jo on the bed, Dean was leaning over the box, rummaging through it. “Dad tended to stay away from other hunters, with a few exceptions.”

“Hey, look at this!” Dean exclaimed, laughter in his voice.

Sam put his dad’s journal down on the dresser to join Dean and Jo. The photo Dean was holding was one of John, a blond toddler in his lap who was tilted to the left like the kid was trying to squirm out of the embrace. The expression on John’s face was halfway between a grimace and a smile, his eyes downcast, looking at the child on his knees. On the right hand-side of the picture you could see half of an arm, slim woman fingers stretched toward the kid’s shoulder.

Sam felt his lips start to form a smile, the idea of his dad handling a small child striking him as funny, somehow—strangely enough, as his dad had raised two kids on his own, after all.

“Hey,” Jo said suddenly. “It’s me. I must have been like, two. I recognize the sweater.”

“It’s you?” Dean’s eyebrows knitted together, forming puzzled lines on his forehead and the beginning of something like indignation. “What’s the hell are you doing on my dad’s knees?”

The outrage in his voice would’ve been funny in other circumstances. Jo was perceptive enough that she didn’t react to the tone and merely said, “It’s strange that I’ve apparently met your dad when I was little, but it didn’t look like my mom had ever seen you two before.”

Sam and Dean shared a look over Jo’s bended head. It was really no mystery—it had to be related to what Dad had said to Dean before he died. What he’d said about Sam. Something was _wrong_ with Sam, so his dad probably hadn’t wanted him to be anywhere close the many hunters that came and went in the Roadhouse. If enough of them were like Gordon…

“Like Sammy said,” Dean said with a steely undercurrent to his voice. “Dad was wary of other hunters.”

Jo raised her head from the picture, looked at Dean, then Sam, her mouth twisting a little bit. “I grew up around hunters and turned out just fine.” At Dean’s snort, she said, “Oh, don’t start. Like the two of you are any better.”

“Aw, don’t pout, Joanna Beth,” Dean teased, snickering when she shoved at him. “You were a cute two-year-old.”

“Yeah, I bet you were a hellish two-year-old.” Jo’s eyes drifted back to the picture. “I wish I remembered some of this.”

\--- 

_Nebraska, September 1986_

“Come on, Jo. Sit still, baby. Look at Daddy.”

The little girl wriggled on John’s lap, throwing her legs in the air in an attempt to reach the floor. Out of balance she started to list to the side like a sinking boat and Ellen laughed, reaching out a hand to settle her.

“I don’t think your kid likes me too much, Ellen,” John said. “She must get that from her daddy,” he added wryly, tearing his eyes away from the baby to glance up.

“That’s my girl,” Bill cooed from where he was standing a few feet away, camera in hand as he tried to take a picture of his baby girl on John’s knees. “Hunter’s instincts, this one.”

John, Jo and Ellen were sitting on the Roadhouse’s porch in wooden armchairs, enjoying the warmth of an Indian summer evening. The sun was almost set behind the house, the last few honey-colored rays giving a golden hue to the trees and the couple of trucks parked up front, and the wood of the chair was still sun-warm under John’s bare forearms. Jo started to whine faintly in frustration and John bounced his knees rhythmically, alternating between the right one and the left one—right, left, right, left—until the toddler giggled and clapped her hands in delight.

“You’re not doing too bad with her,” Ellen commented. Bill, having probably taken the damn picture at last, joined them on the porch and slid by his wife’s side, resting a hand against the nape of her neck and watching John and his daughter with a small smile. Ellen leaned into his touch, head tilted back.

“Ever wanted to have kids, John?” Bill asked lightly, and the words hit John like a blow and made him still. Sammy, he thought, was barely any older than Jo was. 

What was he doing here, playing with a kid that wasn’t his? He hadn’t been gone for too long this time, but he’d promised Dean he would be back before nightfall. All at once there was something obscene about the domesticity of the present scene, and his insides burned with a sudden sense of urgency, making it impossible to keep sitting there on the Harvelles’ quiet porch.

“I need to go,” he said and scooped Jo into his arms, ignoring her high-pitched protests, to hand her out to her parents.

“John, what is it?” Ellen asked, her brow furrowed as she took her daughter from John and rocked her in her arms. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought you’d be staying the night,” Bill said, raising from his half-sitting position against Ellen’s chair. “What the hell, John? What did I say?”

“I really have to go. I’ve stayed too long already.”

“You sound like a married man running away from his mistress,” Bill said, the corner of his mouth quirking, but not smiling all the way. “Come on, you can tell us what the big deal is. I thought we were friends. Are you in trouble?”

John heaved a sigh, and glanced inside the Roadhouse: there were a couple of hunters drinking in there, crusty old men that were leaning, almost lying, against the counter, noses in their drinks. Friends, Bill said. John couldn’t deny he liked Bill, liked coming to the Roadhouse, not so much for the booze but because he liked Ellen too. She was a hell of a woman, so much like Mary when they’d first met, but less intense, more serene and at peace with her life.

“I already have kids, Bill,” he admitted, his voice pitched low so that only Bill and Ellen would hear him. “Two boys. Dean and Sammy. They’re seven and three.”

Bill and Ellen remained silent for a moment, looking at John with unreadable expressions. “Are they… staying with their mother?” Ellen asked softly. Bill said nothing; he knew John had lost his wife—actually, John was a little surprised he hadn’t told Ellen.

“No,” John said. “Their mother is dead. They’re staying with a friend.”

Truth to be told, John was feeling a little defensive. He probably wasn’t father of the year, but he found that he didn’t want Bill and Ellen judging him. He didn’t like owing Pastor Jim favors, but the boys really were too young to fend for themselves for the moment. 

“Okay, Johnny boy,” Bill said, crossing the distance between them and clasping John’s shoulder, his thumb pressed firmly against his collarbone. “Go back to your kids.”

Ellen kissed him goodbye with a light peck on his cheek. The warmth of her lips lingered for a moment. “Next time,” she said, “bring your boys so they can play with Jo.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. The lie tasted bitter on his tongue.

\---

_Iowa, February 2007_

Time disappeared as they spent God knows how long sifting the contents of the box. There were cutout newspaper articles about gruesome murders, disappearances, strange occurrences; a hunter’s bread and butter. They were circled and scribbled all over, sometimes with the chicken scratch that was John’s handwriting, sometimes with someone else’s unfamiliar hand. There were more pictures, none of Jo again, but some of Bill and John, often drinking beer somewhere that was obviously the Roadhouse, some of Bill, Ellen and John together, and a notable one of John and Ellen. They were on the porch outside the Roadhouse, and John was sitting in an armchair, Ellen sprawled all over him with her legs thrown over the arm like she’d just stumbled into his arms. Both of them were laughing, their eyes on each other rather than on whoever had taken the picture.

Again, Sam thought uneasily of his theory about his father and Ellen, and was thankful that neither Dean nor Jo ever commented on it. Between the both of them, they had enough parental issues to fill all the country’s bank vaults. Sam didn’t want to be a witness of their confrontation if they thought they had to defend their respective parent’s honors. 

“Look at this one,” he said, to divert their attention from the picture of John and Ellen. 

The picture he was holding was one of John alone, standing in a doorway leading outside. None of the exterior scenery was visible, and it made it look like John was about to step into a pool of light. He was half-turned away from the photographer, his eyes directed to something outside. It looked like he’d been caught unaware.

“That’s Dad?” Dean murmured, something like wonder in his voice, his fingers brushing against the lonely John figure. Sam understood the feeling: never before had he seen his dad look so unguarded.

“Hey, there’s a date on this one,” Jo said, her neck twisted so that she could look at the back of the picture.

Sam frowned—most of the other pictures hadn’t been dated—and turned the photo to check. Here it was, indeed, _March 1987._

“One year before my dad died,” Jo said. “I wonder…” She trailed off, a faraway look in her eyes, completely turned inward. 

“You wonder what?” Dean said when it didn’t look like the end of that sentence would come. 

Jo shook herself. “Nothing. Just about who took that picture. That looks a little… intimate, don’t you think?”

They had spilled the content of the box on Dean’s bed, and everything was messily spread around where the three of them were sitting, like they were at the center of an explosion, the documents taken then discarded with no particular attempt at ordering them. Sam saw with dread that Jo’s attention was drawn again to the laughing picture of John and Ellen.

“What do you mean, intimate?” Dean said. “It’s not like he’s butt-naked or something.”

But the irritation in his tone betrayed the fact that he knew exactly what Jo was getting at, and Sam stifled a sigh, steeling himself for what was coming. So much for trying to distract Dean and Jo from wondering too much about what had transpired between their parents. Dean wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Jo for that matter.

“You know what I mean,” Jo said, and now she sounded irritated too. “Look at this,” she pointed at the picture of John and Ellen, “and tell me you don’t see anything weird going on there.”

“Look, why don’t you say what’s on your mind rather than giving me that beating-around-the-bush bullshit?” Dean stood up abruptly, his hands balled into fists, maybe so he could tower Jo with his height. “What, you think my dad went around sleeping with his buddies’ wives?”

Jo wasn’t about to let herself be intimidated and she jumped on her feet too, chin up in defiance. “Don’t give me that tone, Dean Winchester,” she said, and sounded very much like her mom. “You think I _like_ the idea that my mom maybe cheated on my dad with your father? And that later _your_ dad killed _my_ dad?”

“Hey, now, what are you—”

Sam stepped between them, one hand on Jo’s shoulder and the other spread over his brother’s chest. “Quit it, both of you!” His booming voice startled Dean and Jo into silence.

“Dean, seriously, you’re acting like you’ve regressed to twelve years old. Chill out, dude. And Jo.” He softened his voice as he turned to her. She wasn’t family, after all, and he couldn’t tell her off like he could Dean. “Do you honestly think that our dad killed yours because of some nefarious plan to get your mother for himself?”

Jo crossed her arms on her chest and looked away. “No,” she said after a moment. “Of course not. I’m sorry—I was out of line.”

“Yeah, I’d say,” Dean huffed, and Sam shot him an exasperated look.

“Look,” he said, “It’s just a couple of pictures, and there’s nothing really incriminating there. Not enough to get ourselves twisted into knots over it. We’re lacking any context.”

“We could always ask Ellen,” Dean said, but when Jo and Sam looked at him incredulously he grimaced. “Or maybe not.”

“Still,” Jo said, reaching out to take the picture of John in the doorway. “This one is dated when the others aren’t. This has to mean something. But what?”

And that was precisely the thousand-dollar question, wasn’t it. Sam’s eyes couldn’t stay away from the image of his father. John looked so young on this picture, way younger than Sam was able to remember him. Seeing him like this made it easier for Sam to relate to him, to the weight that must have been on his shoulders, to the guilt over their mother’s death, and then, a few years later, over Bill Harvelle’s death.

“I guess they wanted to remember that day,” he said.

\---

_Nebraska, March 1987_

“Come on, Winchester, stay awake.”

John groaned, annoyed at Bill’s stupid needling. “’M awake,” he said, slurring a bit but only because he was fucking exhausted. 

He was also in pain, from the pounding in his head to the deep-seated ache in his chest that made it difficult to breathe and to shift position without feeling like someone was trying to stab him, not to speak of the need to keep his hand pressed against the spreading sticky warmth in his stomach area. All of this conspired to make it really fucking hard to fall asleep, but he was too tired to explain it to Bill.

The car came to a stop, and John remembered to wonder where they were. Seeing that John wasn’t exactly in any shape to drive, they’d taken Bill’s car—John made a mental note to think about getting the Impala back—and John hadn’t focused on the direction they’d taken. It was dark outside but there were some lights on— _Harvelle’s Roadhouse_ blinked at him from above a shadowed porch. Then the porch lit up and a figure silhouetted in the entrance.

John opened the door on the passenger side and dragged himself out of the car, muffling the sound of pain that wanted out.

“Bill? John?” This was Ellen, the sound of her feet scrunching on the fine gravel. 

“John’s hurt, babe,” Bill said. “So I brought him here.”

“You did good,” Ellen said, and then John felt a slim arm slipping around his waist. He let out a groan. “No, don’t—” he mumbled.

“Okay, ribs, got it,” she said, stepping away a little but keeping close. “Where else does it hurt?”

“I’m fine,” John groused. “I can walk on my own.”

“Typical macho response,” Ellen said flippantly, before she grabbed him by the elbow, her hold on him loose but steadying. It shouldn’t have felt so good, her touch, the very faint jasmine scent coming from her. John sucked in a breath, pressed his fingers a little harder against the wound on his midsection.

“You’re bleeding,” Ellen said, then pushed him toward the lit up entrance. “Let’s get inside.” 

Meanwhile, Bill had walked around the car to meet with his wife, hooking an arm around her neck and pressing his lips on the top of her head. He sighed against her hair, murmuring, “Is Jo in bed?”

“Yes, she’s asleep upstairs. Wanted her daddy to kiss her goodnight but I told her you’d be there when she wakes up.” John was still within reach of the embraced couple, close enough that it felt like an intrusion, like he should step outside of this affectionate bubble he didn’t belong to. He wanted to do just that but Ellen suddenly tightened her grasp on his arm. “You’re not getting away, Winchester. I want to have a look at you.”

They went inside, Ellen and Bill framing him like a pair of bodyguards. On the counter, there was a first aid kit and a bottle of whisky, signs that Ellen had prepared for their return; or Bill’s, at least. She gestured John to take a seat on one of the stools, while Bill opened the bottle and took a swig. 

“Leave some for the wounded, will you,” John said, then hissed when Ellen peeled his shirt off his wound. 

“Damn, John,” Bill said, peering at him over his wife’s shoulder. 

John looked down on himself, at the mess of blood and dirt just above his navel that faded into a series of bruises climbing up to his ribcage. The wound—or wounds, rather—were hard to distinguish, a series of gashes of various sizes. 

“Werewolf got his claws in you good,” Bill said after a silence. 

Ellen, who’d started cleaning up the wounds with an efficiency born out of habit, looked up and said, “Is that all he got in you?”

John swallowed. Wrestling with the werewolf was a blurry memory, a quick and dirty fight, the both of them rolling on rocky ground until Bill put a bullet into the goddamn monster’s heart. John had tried as best as he could to keep the thing’s fangs off him, but….

“They look like scratches to me,” Bill said, adamant, but Ellen said nothing. 

John snatched the whisky out of Bill’s hand and had a healthy gulp of it. Then he took the gun he had tucked under his belt, weighed it up, trying to remember how many silver bullets he’d used on the werewolf. He handed the weapon out to Bill, butt forward. 

“Take it. You know what to do.”

Bill took the gun, looking at it dumbly—probably as exhausted as John felt, and maybe a bit numbed from the alcohol—and Ellen gave John a harsh look. “Stop the melodramatics, John,” she bit out, “Bill is not about to—”

“I’m not suggesting he takes me down right this instant,” John shot back. “It’s not like I want to die—I have my boys. But before the night is done we’ll know for sure if that werewolf got a bite of me. It’s the full moon. And then…”

“And then Bill gets to _shoot_ you?” 

Ellen sounded furious; she’d stopped dabbing at his wounds and was looking at him with terribly bright eyes. John couldn’t figure what her deal was—she didn’t hunt anymore but lived and breathed hunting, knew how the game was played, probably better than John himself did. You were hunter _or_ monster; death was the only third way there was.

“Ellen,” Bill said mildly, but he looked about to be sick.

“You could do it yourself, if you’d rather have a shot at me,” John said. He’d meant it as a joke, but Ellen didn’t look like she was in a joking mood. He thought she was going to start a rant, but she merely shook her head and continued tending to his injuries, although maybe not as gently as she could have.

It took another fifteen minutes before the wounds were cleaned and bandaged and John carefully slipped on one of Bill’s shirts while Bill watched him do it, sitting on a table and methodically drinking the whisky down. Ellen fussed with bloodied gauze and cotton, cleaning up the counter with a frenzied sort of energy despite the late hour.

Bill still had John’s gun; he looked down at it. “Do you want to go lie down in one of the backrooms?” he asked.

“He shouldn’t sleep. He probably has a concussion on top of it all,” Ellen said, clipping the first aid kit shut before leaning against the counter, crossing and uncrossing her arms, looking like she didn’t know what to do with her hands.

Brain trauma felt like such a faraway concern to John. There was even some temptation to the idea of going to sleep and not waking up, and not having to stare into the barrel of the gun about to kill you. That would be the coward way out, though, and John shoved the thought deep down.

“I’m good here,” he said, propping himself on an elbow against the counter behind, trying to relieve his aching torso from the effort of sitting straight.

“You can go to bed, honey,” Bill said, and Ellen rolled her eyes like this didn’t even deserved an answer. She joined him and drew a chair from the table where he sat.

And they started waiting. At first no one talked, Ellen shut down in a mulish silence and Bill as close to emotionless as John had ever seen him. Then Bill stopped being a hogging bastard and started to pass the bottle around until liquor loosened everyone’s tongue.

“Tell us about your boys,” Ellen asked.

John had left his bar stool for a chair by Bill and Ellen, his uninjured side against the back of the chair for minimal discomfort. Alcohol was making Ellen languid as she leaned against Bill’s thigh, her legs stretched out so that her ankles were pressed to John’s own. 

“Dean turned eight a couple months ago; Sam’s almost four. Dean got really silent after his mother’s death, but he’s started to get out of his shell again and is almost back to the rambunctious kid he was.” _Almost_. “Sammy’s really bright for his age; kid’s going to have me going round in circles before soon, I can tell.” John swallowed some whisky and passed the bottle to Bill, their fingers brushing for a brief, startling moment. “They’re in Blue Earth, Minnesota with a friend, Pastor Jim—he’s a hunter, so you can explain—”

“Shut up, John,” Bill said, his tone cutting. It startled John a bit out of his alcohol-induced fuzzy cocoon—Bill was a laughing, easy-going man and John had never seen him get mad. “I never said I was going to shoot you,” Bill added.

“What?” John straightened up a little too abruptly and his ribs screamed in protest. “Bill, you _have to_ —”

“I know, I know.” Bill flapped a dismissive hand at John. “If you get all werewolf on our asses, yeah. I won’t let you eat my wife, for sure.” It had been said lightly, and earned him a smirk from Ellen. But then Bill’s expression sobered and he said firmly, “It won’t happen.” 

It sounded like a promise, and the solemn silence that followed was only broken when Ellen snatched the whisky from her husband. They swiftly shifted conversations and soon enough the bar was filled with drunken laughter as Bill and Ellen recounted their first meeting.

“Man, I thought she was going to bite my head off!”

“Well, that’s what you get for stealing a woman’s spot in a line.”

“I hadn’t even seen you there!”

John laughed as Ellen mock-beat her husband over the head, a hand pressed to his ribs, struggling to keep the chuckles inside and calm the spasms sending sharp jolts of pain through his chest. When Ellen’s blows dissolved into peals of laughter, Bill lowered the arm he’d raised to protect himself from her and combed his fingers through her hair.

“She was so beautiful, John,” he said dreamily, and even if he’d been named John felt he was no more than an after-thought. “All vibrant with anger, her hair the color of the sun setting on the fields back home.”

Husband and wife were gazing into each other’s eyes, and John had once again that obscene feeling, cushioned by a large amount of whisky, that he was a filthy intruder. Ellen rose to sit on the edge of the table with Bill so they could kiss, and John watched them dumbly as Bill buried his hand in Ellen’s hair and Ellen slid hers under his shirt. He felt something swelling inside his chest that had nothing to do with the pain in his ribs. He’d be hard-pressed to tell what it was—embarrassment? Envy? He was too drunk to figure it out.

The best he could do was give them some privacy—maybe go to the offered backroom and have a rest—but when he stood up, angling away from the couple, he felt a hand circle his wrist. At first he thought that was Ellen again, but the hand was too big, the grip too strong. He turned around and saw Bill and Ellen watch him, arms around each other, flushed from the kissing and the hard drinking. 

“Where you going, John?” Bill said lazily, fingers rubbing circles on Ellen’s shoulder. “I thought we were supposed to watch over you.”

Through the alcoholic haze surrounding him John became suddenly very aware of every point of contact between him and the Harvelles: the warmth of Bill’s fingers around his wrist, Ellen’s feet brushing against his leg. 

“I—” Bill was still holding him, and John thought he should be doing something to free himself from his grip, but he couldn’t even begin to form the thought. 

“Just a few more hours and we’ll know,” Ellen said. She dropped lightly on her feet then rose to her tiptoes, both of her hands on John’s shoulders. She looked at him in the eye, her mouth formed a half-smile, and she leaned in and pressed her lips against John’s. 

For a moment John melted into the contact—it’d been too long since the last time someone had kissed him—but reality rushed back to him and he pulled away with a gasp. Instinctively he looked to Bill, who hadn’t let go of him and was standing by his wife’s side, the two crowding his personal space. It was getting hot and stifling, not enough air between the three of them, and John had the overwhelming feeling that he’d completely lost his grasp on the situation. 

“Bill,” John blurted out, frantically thinking of damage control, then forgot what he wanted to say when Bill kissed him too. It was a surprisingly soft kiss, very similar to the one Ellen had given him, light like a promise. So light that it would have felt like John had imagined it if not for the way Bill moved closer to him, their hips a hair’s breadth apart, making warmth pool low in John’s gut.

“What—” 

John took a step back—he needed to _think_ , damn it, but his mouth was too dry and his chest felt tight and painful, his heart hammering against his sore ribs. Ellen had been one hell of a surprise already, but _Bill_. 

“Is it a thing that you do?” he asked, fighting to get his footing back. “Drag random hunters to your bed?”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed and she slapped the side of his head—not enough to hurt in normal circumstances, but there were few parts of him that weren’t sore today.

“Don’t be an asshole, John,” she said. “If you can help it, that is.”

Bill looped an arm behind John’s neck, cupping the back of his head with one large hand, and drawing him in until their foreheads touched.

“Anytime now I may have to shoot you,” he said in a low whisper. John could smell the whisky in his breath but Bill’s eyes were clear, and there was something strangely raw in his voice. “What do you say we live a little in the meantime?”

For the first time tonight the thought really hit John that he was maybe going to die, bleeding out to death on the Roadhouse’s freshly swept floor. Die with little Jo peacefully asleep upstairs in her wooden crib. Die without ever seeing his boys again. Tomorrow Sam and Dean would maybe wake up as true orphans. The realization stripped the situation to its bare essentials—Bill and Ellen’s arms around him, the warmth of their bodies, their beating hearts, the love that they shared and were offering him to be a part of, even if only for a fleeting moment.

“Well, if I’m going to Hell tonight,” he said quietly, “I may as well enjoy the ride.”

“Famous last words,” Bill said with a wicked grin.

John didn’t die that night, and in the morning they all acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

\---

_Iowa, February 2007_

An hour later they decided to take a break from the trip down memory lane. Too much raw emotion for one room, dead parents hovering over their shoulders like phantom hawks, each with their share of unresolved issues staling the air. After a while they’d threatened to get choked on it all. Dean had suggested they get something to eat, eagerly offering himself for the trip.

“Sooo,” Jo said, hooking a leg over her knee, leaning back on her elbows. “How long have you been holed up here?”

Sam had let Dean go because his brother looked about to burst out of his own skin. Of course, that meant that Jo and he were now sitting across from each other on the twin beds, the gap between them wide as a precipice. 

“Few days,” he answered. “How did you find us anyway?”

“Singer ratted you out.” She smiled but it looked too sharp, cut across her face like a wound. 

Silence became awkward, so Sam stood up, wanting to go to the window and look out for Dean’s arrival, and had to brush past Jo on the way. She flinched when he got too close, tried to hide it by bending as if to study the underside of her shoe, but not fast enough that Sam couldn’t recognize it for what it was. He froze, suddenly not remembering why he was even up in the first place for but unable to go back to his seat, stuck at a crossroad.

“Sorry,” he said, immediately acknowledging that he should have just let it fly when she sighed.

“Don’t,” she said with no heat. “I know—I know it wasn’t you. It just…”

“It looked like me. So you can’t help it. I understand.”

“Yeah.”

They smiled at each other, both taking refuge in the pretense. It wasn’t the exact truth, not as far as Sam was concerned. It hadn’t just looked like him; it had made use of his body. He remembered shoving Jo against the counter, bending her backward, feeling the silk of her hair in his hand. He remembered her struggles, her cries. He remembered more than he cared to tell Dean—it seemed like the demon had wanted him to see what it was doing with Sam’s hands, skipping the mundane parts and making him resurface for the good bits. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he offered lamely, ignoring the screams his mind sent him— _Don’t! Don’t talk about it—ignore it, bury it, never let it see the light again._

Jo, all the way a hunter’s daughter, merely snorted at his absurd proposal.

“Yeah, talk about it. And hold hands and cry on each other’s shoulder? I don’t think so.” It could have been Sam’s brother talking. She gave a small wave of her hand in his direction. “Are you going to keep standing there? You’re going to give me a crick in the neck.”

Sam hadn’t moved an inch and was still standing halfway between the beds and the window, rooted on the spot. He made himself walk back to the beds, and slowly, very deliberately, sat down on Dean’s bed, side-to-side with Jo but leaving a respectful distance between them. She had a hesitant half-smile, permission or approval—Sam was grateful for whichever. 

He glanced around, looking for anything to fix his attention but the very acute and tense awareness of Jo’s presence. The documents from Ellen’s shoebox were still on the bed, gathered in haphazard piles all over the covers. Sam’s eyes were caught by a white piece of paper, half-hidden in-between the blanket’s folds. He grabbed it, his curiosity piqued, and when he pulled it out saw that it was an envelope. 

“What’s this?” he heard Jo ask. 

The door opened before Sam could answer, bringing in Dean and a waft of cold air and rain. Dean’s hair was wet-dark and his cheeks rosy from the outside temperature, but he was grinning, looking more relaxed than when he’d left earlier.

“Who’s hungry?” he asked with uncanny cheer, opening up his jacket to reveal the brown paper bag tucked under his arm, rubbing the rain off his face with one hand. Then he looked to Sam and Jo.

“What’re you looking at?” he enquired.

“I found an envelope, but…” 

Sam turned it around, examining all sides of it looking for an address, a stamp, a postmark, but it was completely blank. It had been sealed off but the upper part was torn open. It was too thick to be empty and Sam peered inside curiously. There was one piece of paper, neatly folded in three and scribbled over on both sides.

“This is Mom’s writing,” Jo said. 

With his stomach doing a little somersault, Sam realized she’d edged closer to him and was now leaning over his shoulder. Dean abandoned the food on the table and came to position himself in front of Sam and Jo.

“What does it say?” he said.

Sam sneaked a glance at Jo, but she nodded for him to go ahead. Sam licked his lips and cleared his throat.

“March 1988,” he started.

“That’s after my dad’s death,” Jo murmured.

“Dear John.” Sam let a silence hang there for a moment while the words sunk in all three of them. Dean had his arms crossed over his chest, his face tight and strained. He raised a hand to rub absentmindedly at his injured shoulder. Jo was pressed against Sam’s side, breathing to his ear, disturbingly loud.

“Dear John,” Sam repeated, “It took me days to find the right words for you. Is there even any right word for the situation? Can this letter find its way to you? You dropped off from the face of the earth, as you do, and I’m betting you don’t want me to find you. And the truth is, I don’t know if I want to find you. Everything has been broken up with Bill’s death and I don’t know if we can make the leftover pieces fit together in any way…”

\---

_California, January 1988_

John and Bill swiftly made their way down the steep slope, half-sliding, half-trotting, small rocks rolling underfoot. They’d followed the tunnel burrowing its way under the road leading to the Devil’s Gate Dam and emerged to a trail snaking down between bushes, trees and rocks. The Dam loomed somewhere at their back or on their right according to the twists and turns of the trail, a pale ghost of massive stone standing out against the dark sky.

“John,” Bill called in a low voice. “For fuck’s sake, John, slow down.”

John thought about ignoring him. They’d been getting on each other’s nerves this past week, cooped up together in a motel in Pasadena for longer than they were used to, the stress from their hunt weighting down on both of them. Three kids missing, the last one about Dean’s age; it was speaking to John and Bill’s fatherly instincts and there was an impatience to both of them, an irritation that had them lashing at each other, out for blood. 

But they were out on a hunt and John couldn’t just pretend he hadn’t heard his partner; that was the kind of stupid behavior that ended up with someone killed. John stilled but didn’t turn around, his body humming with tension.

“We’re fucking doing this, Bill,” he uttered through gritted teeth.

They’d been fighting over this for a whole fucking day. The reason for their disagreement was simple: John thought the Devil’s Gate was an actual gate to Hell, and that it was the evil seeping out of it that explained everything weird that had happened around here and had made that place a legend: the brutal murder of Donald Baker and Brenda Howel in ’56; the disappearances of little Bowman and Bruce Kremen one year later, everything that had happened in the past few months in Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge. John was ready for it to be over and he had a plan, but Bill thought it was reckless and had been nitpicking at it enough to make a more patient man than John was lose his calm.

“I don’t hear you coming up with a better plan,” he added scathingly. 

“I know.” John heard the scraping sound of Bill hurtling down the slope to join him. “I just have a bad feeling about this.”

That gave John pause; a hunter’s instinct was his best weapon, and Bill did have more experience than John on the job. Moreover, he wasn’t a coward. He wouldn’t back off on this unless he felt it was really serious.

John tried to feel for whatever was spooking Bill. It was cold like a Southern California winter night, that is to say not very cold compared to the rest of the world, but chilly enough that it wasn’t comfortable being outside in just a leather jacket. The only sounds were from the odd car driving by on the road up there and the howls of a lonely coyote, high quavering cries that echoed in the distance. It made for a quietly creepy atmosphere, but John was used to the night and couldn’t feel anything especially eerie.

“Look,” he said tiredly. “Let’s get at least to the place Lydia Bowman said she saw the shadow. See if we can find anything there. I’d rather not have made that hike in the dark for nothing.” 

Bill’s agreement with that plan manifested as a heavy hand dropping on John’s shoulder, and they resumed their walk down the trail in the dark. They had to use their flashlights when the glow from the moon started to dim because of the clouds in the sky, and those twin rays of light guided them through scattered rocks and crossing streams of greenish water on wooden planks.

They reached their destination just as a cold wind rose, piercing through John’s clothes like a thousand sharp little knives. A stretch of stale water, smelling like decomposing plants, separated them from the rock wall on the other side—there was an arched entry leading to a man-made tunnel, its rusty gate wide open, and on its right the rock was bumpy and formed an oddly twisted face crowned by a horn-shaped point, completing the devil’s face that had given its name to the place. The bottom of the rock was covered in tags, marking the passage of the kids and teenagers who had disappeared or been scared into madness by the evil that had taken residence here. The silence was broken only by the murmur of the small waterfall somewhere on their right.

“Can you feel it?” Bill whispered, his voice rising barely higher than the sound of the waterfall.

John could, now that they finally were right at the source of it all. They’d hiked around during daytime but it hadn’t felt like this at all, and they’d never been at this exact spot. It had taken some time to make sense of the multiple stories running wild among the locals, but now John could _feel_ the sick sensation curling at the pit of his stomach, the shiver crawling at the surface of his skin, rising goose bumps over his whole body.

“Yeah,” he said, and it came out croaky. John shook himself; that thing was trying to scare them off, and what kind of hunter would he be if he let it succeed? “Let’s try the ritual.”

“You really think it’s gonna work?”

This wasn’t the first time he’d said it. “What have we got to lose?” John replied, taking off his backpack and unzipping it to get to what they needed for the ritual.

He thought that Bill was going to fight him on the issue again, and was relieved when he merely blew out a heavy sigh and kicked in a small rock that rolled down and plopped into the water.

“You’re a stubborn son of a bitch,” he said.

John allowed himself a smirk in the dark. “You better believe it.” 

John crouched on the ground to be level with the water-filled jar he’d taken out of his backpack. He lined up in front of him the rose thorns and petals, and the salt he needed for the ritual, and shoved a hand into his jeans pocket for the rumpled paper he’d written the spell on. He more or less knew it by heart—it was only a few sentences in Latin that he’d have to repeat several times until the evil spirit was trapped into the jar—but stage fright was a thing, and in hunting it could mean death rather than rotten tomatoes.

“Cover for me,” he said to Bill, but of course his friend already had his gun out. They didn’t know if what they were up against would be susceptible to bullets, but guns had a way to make John feel better.

“Here goes nothing,” John murmured, and proceeded to crush the thorns and petals and to throw them into the jar, chanting Latin in-between each addition.

“Did you hear that?” Bill said, just as John was about to add salt to the water.

“What?” John said impatiently. It looked like that silly ritual wasn’t doing a thing, which meant that Bill was right and they’d lost their time, and… Something hissed from inside the tunnel. “What the hell was that?” John said, his hand flying at his back for his gun.

“Keep going with the ritual,” Bill said, “I’m on it.”

“But—”

“Do it, John!”

Bill pointed his gun somewhere over John’s head and fired—the bullet ripped against the rock and John caught something at the corner of his eye, a moving shadow, a piece of darkness that had come to life. John cursed and added the salt to the water jar, repeating Latin until the words all blurred into each other.

He only raised his head when he heard Bill scream.

“Bill!” 

He jumped on his feet, knocking over the jar in his haste, gun in hand and finger on the trigger—but when he saw Bill, the shadow wrapped around him like a sheet, he couldn’t do anything but waver his gun uncertainly, not knowing where to shoot. Bill’s scream turned to shrieks and John thought he could hear bones crack, like the shadow was slowly crushing him.

“Bill! Hold on, I—”

John did the only thing he could think to do: salt can in hand, he jumped on Bill and the shadow, knocking all of them down in the water. He felt a shock like he’d stepped on live wire, and blindly spilled salt everywhere he could reach. He got hit behind the head and fell face first in the water, his world cold and silent for a moment, but the pool was thankfully shallow enough that he could rise on his knees, coughing and spluttering. He reached out for Bill and grabbed his coat, dragging him out of the water with everything he had left. Bill was moaning, hacking up water and blood, miraculously alive. John knelt down by him and his heart stopped when he saw the mess of blood and torn flesh and fabric—and was this _bone?_

“It—fuck–it’s—” Bill stammered, gasping for breath between syllables, each gasp making a horrible wheezing sound.

“Don’t talk,” John said, hands desperately hovering over Bill’s body, looking for a spot to rest that wasn’t bleeding heavily. “Don't—I’m gonna call for help, hang on.”

He rose to one knee but Bill caught him by the wrist, his grip surprisingly strong.

“It’s in _me_ ,” he hissed, obviously pouring his remaining energy in the words. “ _In me_.”

John gaped at him, breathless from the fight and the shock. He hadn’t seen where the shadow had gone and he looked around searching for it—the moon had reappeared from behind the clouds and the still water reflected it as a disc of white gold, and the shadows playing on the devil’s face made out of the bumps on the rock seemed to dance unnaturally, stretching on one part until it drew a manic smile—but everything was hushed and unmoving. 

“It’s gone,” he told Bill. 

“No, no.” Bill’s fingers were digging into John’s forearm, so hard they were probably going to leave bruises. “It’s—” he coughed again and blood tinged his lips, “I _feel_ it. John, you have to—”

“No,” John said, shaking his head in denial.

“Remember—the werewolf?”

 _Bastard_ , John thought unkindly. “ _You_ didn’t have to kill me,” he said aloud with a touch of anger.

“Would’ve done ‘t,” Bill said, his voice slurring a little, his eyes closing like he was too tired to keep them open. “I would’ve— _hated_ it, but… ‘S the way it is.”

“I can’t kill you.”

“Dyin’ anyway.”

John felt his heart hammer against his ribs, struck paralyzed by the inevitability of what was happening. He was wet and cold from the water and from kneeling in the mud, and it was like the cold started from his legs and spread up to his heart like poison.

“Stay with me,” he said, his voice coming out rough and uncontrolled. He unclasped Bill’s fingers around his wrist to grab his hand and hold it tight. “Jesus, Bill, I—What am I gonna tell Ellen?”

Bill made another ugly sound, halfway between a laugh and a cough. “You’ll find somethin’.” He half-opened his eyes, enough that John could see a sliver of white. “You’ll have to tell my baby girl that—that Daddy’s sorry and—and loves her. And you tell Ellen—” 

Bill tugged feebly on John’s sleeve and John leaned in, thinking Bill was too weak to utter his last message. He didn’t expect the shock of Bill’s cold lips meeting his without finesse, their noses smashing against each other. It lasted for a few seconds, just enough for John to taste blood, and then Bill leaned back, visibly exhausted by the effort. John hadn’t pulled away and could feel Bill’s breath against his face when he said, “Johnny, please, please—” He started trembling and John could feel it in his whole body, like he was at the center of his own personal earthquake. “Can’t hold it down—fuck. _Please_.” 

Bill’s face scrunched like a wrinkled tissue. It was excruciating to watch. John still had his gun in his other hand and he pointed it at Bill’s head – it was like looking at a disembodied hand floating in front of him, like he wasn’t the one moving it. He didn’t even hear the gunshot, but it must have happened because suddenly Bill’s forehead was painted red and his head lolled to the side.

It was over. Bill’s last words had been desperate begging and that was what John was going to take back to Ellen. That and that fucking kiss, which John truly didn’t know what to do with. Bringing back in full force that night one year ago that they’d all put behind, or so he’d thought. Meaningless, all of it, shreds of memories as immaterial as air in the difference they made. John found he couldn’t move, Bill’s hand still in his, the darkness and the cold of the night enveloping them both like a shroud. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bill’s red and white face, frozen in death like a wax mask—he almost wished Bill’s eyes were still open so he could close them with a stroke of his fingers along his face, something tender and symbolic that would mark the end of his friend. 

He remained crouched by Bill’s body until the horizon started to lighten with the pale light of dawn.

\---

_Iowa, February 2007_

“…I have a feeling I won’t be seeing you again. This is somehow making me angrier than the fact that my Bill died on your watch because I know this isn’t what he would have wanted. Remember that night? You know the one. Bill would have done it, that night, because you asked. Because that’s what hunting is. We have each other’s back, and sometimes it’s ugly and cruel, but that’s all we have. That’s what you’ll lose if you keep running away.”

Having reached the bottom of the letter—no signature, although it was obvious that Ellen was the author—Sam fell silent. It felt like they were all holding their breath for a moment.

“Is that all?” Jo asked. Her voice was a little strangled, like she was holding back tears. This made Dean’s head whipped to look at her.

“What are you crying for?” he asked roughly.

“I’m not crying!” she snapped. “Don’t give me shit, Winchester.”

“Guys,” Sam said tiredly. It came as a surprise when they actually listened to him and quieted with guilty looks to him and each other.

“It’s just…” Jo sighed, ruffling her hair. “Such a fucking waste, you know? It’s obvious that my parents… loved your dad.” Dean gave her a sharp look. “Like, I mean they were friends, right? And hunting is just so messy, hunters die and that’s just it, I understand that now. Whatever happened… I think my mom misses your father, whether she’s ready to admit it or not. Why else would she give us all this? We haven’t actually learned that much about what happened, except that they were all friends and they blew it.”

“Our dad had a way of driving people crazy,” Dean mumbled, looking down on the carpet.

It was still startling to hear Dean badmouth their father that way, even if Sam knew the reason for it, like his brother had been replaced by a slightly off version of himself. And just when Sam himself thought he understood John better—it was like Dean and he could never be on the exact same wavelength, a sibling case of interconnection that meant that they never got rid of their resentment, not fully, but just poured it into the other.

Jo combed her fingers through her tangled hair. “I didn’t know your father. But I guess my point is that—I’m sorry that I got pissed at you guys for… nothing you even did. Life is too short to hold grudges. Our parents wasted so much time that they ended up running out of it.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Dean’s eyes were two hard stones set in his face, unreadable to anyone but Sam. Sam knew Dean was mad at him for asking to kill him, and at Dad for giving him the responsibility, and at himself for not knowing how to untangle the situation. Sam was mad because he now knew that he had no mean to be certain he wouldn’t turn into a monster. It seemed like they had no way out of this. 

“We don’t mind, Jo,” Sam said softly, even as he still had his eyes on his brother. “You had a right… We’re cool. Aren’t we, Dean?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, then shifted on his feet, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “Sorry I didn’t call you back that time.”

It went like that for a couple of minutes, awkward apologies going round in circles until they had nothing else to say and hadn’t even broached the real core of the matter: they were knocking heads against the dark nature of hunting, the inescapable truth that there was evil and it was no one’s fault, and the past was a burden, and your parents fuck you up, no matter what.

“Anyone up for eating?” Dean asked after a moment, faked nonchalance painted all over him. “Those burgers aren’t gonna keep themselves warm.”

The suggestion was welcomed with approval from all parts. Food, the ultimate icebreaker. They settled around the table in the corner and Dean handed out food to everyone, and Sam discovered he was actually hungry. He had one last look at the documents on the bed, the folded letter and that picture of John and the Harvelles together, looking relaxed and happy, a million years ago. It was strange to think that none of them actually knew those people, even though they were their parents.

“Sammy?” It was Dean’s voice, and it sounded like it came from the end of a very long tunnel. “What’re you dreaming about?”

“Nothing,” Sam said. He noted with some satisfaction that Jo wasn’t sitting far from him and didn’t seem to be uncomfortable. “Nothing important.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_reversebang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/). Having found several dates for Bill Harvelle's death, I decided to choose another one entirely, so my timeline is completely made up. Thanks a lot to [sailorhathor](http://sailorhathor.livejournal.com/) for her lovely art prompt (you can - and should - look at her art [here](http://spectral-eye.livejournal.com/78142.html)) and for her help with the title of my fic, and to [arthurisarthur](http://archiveofourown.org/users/arthurisarthur/pseuds/arthurisarthur), who's like, the fastest beta in the West.


End file.
